Left:
The east wall (Caspar and the Medici family and friends), and the
south wall (Balthasar).

Right:
The south wall (Balthasar) with rebuilt corner and the west wall (Melchior
with bifurcated horse, preceded by mounted page)

This excellent little book by Franco Cardini is available in English and incorporates a fascinating
discussion of both the art and history of Medici Florence, and lots of
illustrations outside the "standard ones".

The ultimate coffee table art book with
dozens of high quality plates of the detail of the Gozzoli Frescos
(some of which appear below).
Only available in Italian.

The relatively small chapel in Michelozzo's Medici Palace was frescoed by Benozzo Gozzoli between
1459 and 1462, with scenes from the Procession of the Magi.
In 1460 Cosimo il Vecchio would have been 71, his son Piero 44, and
grandson Lorenzo 11.

Gozzoli painted the three walls of the body
of the chapel above the level of the choir stalls, but what one sees
today is a bit less than this because the second owners of the palazzo,
the Marchesi Riccardi, decided in the late 1600s to build a massive
formal staircase which was to go through the chapel.

Luckily the
protests of the Florentinians forced the building of a landing round the
chapel, but the SW corner underwent radical surgery so that the horse of
the magi Melchior ended up being cut in two as you can see above right! In addition several
other panels were cut out of the masterpiece. The Riccardi also
sold the altarpiece by Fillipo Lippi - "The Adoration of the Child
Jesus".

Above is the East wall procession led
by the Magi Caspar. Tradition has identified the Magi's features
(left) as an idealized version of Lorenzo. The young Lorenzo
actually appears in the Medici crowd following the Magi (see below), but
this does not invalidate the first hypothesis.

Family Group closer up - incidentally,
just above Gozzoli in the red bonnet is the face of the Sienese Pope -
Pius II (Piccolomini) (1405 - 1458 - 1464 (59)) - placed firmly in
the back row in this Florentine financed and dominated power group.

Cosimo de'Medici (il Vecchio) (1389 - 1464 (75))

Piero de'Medici (il Gottoso)
(1416 - 1469 (53))

The symbolism of the procession
was an extraordinarily brazen act, juxta positioning a family of banker-merchants
with no title or formal overlordship of anything, with a group of kings
- but that was the Medici for you, and they were, after all, bankrolling
most of the activities of the
Council of Florence (1439)!

Ideas for the pageantry derive
from the
Council of Florence in 1439,
when many exotic figures from the Eastern Church were parading around
Florence; the regular Florentine ceremonies for the
Feast of the Magi at Epiphany; and major festivities surrounding the
spring 1459 visit to Florence of
Galeazzo Maria Sforza as ambassador for
Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan and
Florence's ally of the day.

Sienese
Pope Pius II also dropped in for a
couple of weeks accompanied by the awful Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, but he
complained bitterly that he was not looked after in a manner befitting a
Pope (though the Florentinians thought that he was looked after in a
manner befitting a Sienese Pope). He also did not get to see Cosimo, who thought that the idea
of a crusade for which the Pope was seeking funds was barking mad, and
was thus judiciously indisposed.

The magnificently kitted out Magi
Balthasar (above and below left) has the face of the penultimate
Eastern Emperor John VIII Palaeologus
(1390 - 1448). It is thought that the face of his horse is
modelled on a bronze horses head from antiquity then owned by Lorenzo
and now in the Florence Archaeological Museum.

The old Magi Melchior was originally thought
to be Joseph, Patriarch of Constantinople, who died in Florence during
the Council shortly after signing the ineffective reunification
agreement, and was buried in Santa Maria Novella. More
recently he has been identified as Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund of
Luxembourg.

The full breathtaking audacity of the
Medici construct becomes clear - Emperor of the West, followed by
Emperor of the East, followed by Lorenzo .......

Finally , no one has been able to
identify the lad in blue leading the
procession, and this and the identities of most of the other portraits
of the movers and shakers of 1460 sadly remain a mystery.